The lovely Mrs. Spike poses with something she would never ever drink.

 Manufacturer:

Manufactured for, and distributed by The Healthy Beverage Company, Bucks County, PA 18940 (800) 295-1388

The Pitch:

We've created a revolutionary tea-soda, "steaped" full of flavor and nutrition, made from the finest natural ingredients in the world. So twist off the top and enjoy soda's newest alternative. -- from our continued journey to discover great tasting healthy beverages... Eric + Steve

The Ingredients:

Sparkling filtered water, organic evaporated cane juice, natural root beer flavor, caramel color, organic Ceylon green tea, citric acid, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), sodium citrate.

The website:

www.steapsoda.com

 
Spike says:

Lord, I don't know why I want to start off the new year with this - there's no way this can be good. I haven't taken a taste yet...see, I'm stalling. I fear drinks of this type, where they take one product (like floor wax), and combine it with something else (say, dessert topping) in order to widen the market appeal. Don't forget a catchy name (how does "Shimmer" sound?). So here we have green tea. I don't drink green tea so I don't know if it's good or bad. But I do know it's normally not carbonated. So now we have carbonated green tea. That sounds weird, so why not make it a soda? Root beer sounds wholesome ("roots" - they're not just for breakfast any more). Don't forget the name. Tea + soda = tease? Hmmm...probably a perfume. Soda + tea = sodtea. No, too earthy. You get the picture.

Ok, time to drink some. Oh hey, this stuff has no head. Guess why? It's TEA for pete's sake! And the color? Light brown. Just like...wait for it...TEA! The smell? Vanilla. Go figure. (30 seconds later) Well, I just drank some. As root beers go, it sucks. It tastes nothing like a root beer. But as a beverage it's really pretty tasty. It tastes like creme soda. There is a tea note underneath but it's surprisingly mild. I like the taste of cane sugar in general (and this is "organic" cane sugar which means the villagers harvesting it were barefoot) so I'm pleased with this. While the label says this is microbrewed it must certainly refer to the method of making tea (one pot at a time?) because this stuff gets its alleged root beer taste from some rare ingredient called "natural root beer flavor". By the way, this is not "full of nutrition" - unless lots of sugar (this has as much sugar in 8 oz as most root beers have in 12 oz) and some vitamin C meets your definition of nutritious. So here's my advice. Don't be afraid. It's ok to drink this if you just want something to drink and don't want root beer. I would drink this again if I wanted a green tea creme soda for whatever reason. If you want root beer, though, look elsewhere because this is an F.